Stewing Over Safe Sleep

Joe -

That script on your blog is just what I was looking for. I share you distain for the lengthy sleep times when Safe Sleep is active, and immediately deactivated it on my last PowerBook (I also did one better: By creating a directory /var/vm/sleepinage/, you prevent UNIX from creating a file to replace it -- so it never could turn itself back on). I have never needed (or wanted) the Safe Sleep feature in the decade (or more?) that I've used PowerBooks (back to the old grayscale PowerBook Duo).

As of Tuesday, I am a MacBook Pro user, and absolutely need to hot-swap batteries (which the PowerBook did so well). The lack of a short-term battery (or capacitor) to let you coast through un-powered battery changes was a real disappointment.

Now, I can have my cake (hot-swap) and eat it too (not suffer routine delays). Thank you for raising the issue, and providing a very workable solution.

- Steve

I just read your article and thought you would like to know that I see an
average of one MacBook a week with a crashed hard drive. My suspicion is
that it is because of the Safe Sleep preventing the hard drive from powering
down while the user has packed their MacBook in their bag and are running to
catch the bus.

In their effort to save the one in a million from losing the data from a
single open word document, they have caused 1 in 10 to lose all the contents
on their drive. We can recover the data from most of the drives that crash
in a MacBook, but it really depends on the severity of the crash and how
soon we get the drive after it dies.

I think that if Apple wants to insist on having Safe Sleep turned on by
default, they should make it very clear to the users that they should not
move the system until the drive is powered down. On top of that, they
should inform the user of how to know that the hard drive has powered down.
Personally, I would think that a GUI to allow the user to enable or disable
the feature makes sense.especially if they have it turned off, by default.

In this case, I think Microsoft does it better by distinguishing between
hibernate and standby, allowing the user to set their own preferences on
what the system does when they close the lid or walk away from the system.

Anyway, I just thought you would like to know that someone is reading your
article and shares your frustrations.

Luke
 

Luke Coughey
Vice President & CTO
Recovery Force Inc.

Hello,

I bought my MacBook about a year ago, and have recently upgraded to 4GB. Now, when I close my laptop, I've been having problems with the system rebooting. In the research I've done, it appears that this is common when disturbing the system while it is going into Safe Sleep mode after closing the laptop lid, but I can't imagine not being able to close my computer and put it in my bag and head out.

I'm a grad student, so I don't have anything too sensitive on my computer. What are the drawbacks to turning off safe sleep? (Is it just that I'll lose my data if the computer runs out of batteries?). What setting would you recommend that I put my computer into (0,1,3,5,7)? Lastly, how do I change the setting?

Thanks!

Shelby

On 29-Oct-2008, at 04:41, Shelby Clark wrote:
> I'm a grad student, so I don't have anything too sensitive on my
> computer. What are the drawbacks to turning off safe sleep? (Is it
> just that I'll lose my data if the computer runs out of batteries?).
> What setting would you recommend that I put my computer into

I use safe sleep for ALL my Macs, not just laptops. True, the
desktops hardly ever sleep (usually only if I am going to physically
move them, and then it is technically deep sleep), but Safe sleep is
brilliant as I am right back exactly where I was in my work after
waking up.


> (0,1,3,5,7)? Lastly, how do I change the setting?

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode #

Where # is a octal.

However, there's a nifty widget called, iirc, Deep Sleep which is a
much easier way to set it.

<http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20120/deep-sleep>

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